Electronic commerce (e-commerce) sites are configured to offer for sale one or more items and provide virtual shopping carts to facilitate purchase of such items. A user visiting an e-commerce site can place item(s) of interest into a virtual shopping cart, and proceed to a checkout process once he or she is ready to purchase the item(s) placed in the cart. The checkout process typically includes multiple steps such as providing or verifying user identity (e.g., login and password), providing shipping and billing addresses, providing a valid method of payment, confirming items for purchase, and affirmatively authorizing the purchase (e.g., clicking an “order” or “pay” button). Once the user has completed the checkout process, the e-commerce site processes the purchase order to obtain payment and ship the purchased items to the user.
If the checkout process is interrupted, incomplete, the user fails to affirmatively authorize the purchase, or the user is otherwise not ready to make a purchase at that point in time, there is no purchase of the items in the shopping cart. The contents of the particular shopping cart may be lost once the user's session with the e-commerce site is terminated. Alternatively, some e-commerce sites may provide the option to save the user's shopping cart for later access. Even if the user's shopping cart is saved for later access, if the user forgets to return to the shopping cart and complete the checkout process, there is still no purchase of the items in the shopping cart. Or the user may return too late to actually purchase the items in the shopping cart. For example, one or more of the desired items may be sold out, the price may have increased, a promotion may have ended, or any of a variety of purchasing factors may have changed from when the items were originally added to the shopping cart.
The headings provided herein are for convenience only and do not necessarily affect the scope or meaning of the terms used.